


Was and Will Be

by agent85



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coda Challenge @The FitzSimmons Network, Discussion of Parenthood, Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 14:17:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9611093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent85/pseuds/agent85
Summary: Jemma knows that Fitz is still reeling from the things Radcliffe told him no matter what Fitz says.She just hopes the pain from his past won't blind them from the joy the future could offer them.





	

He told the LMD that Mack dubbed "Radbot" that he was out of that loop, but she knows him better than that. He's in a literal loop now as he paces back and forth, hands on his hips and head shaking back and forth. He's been at this for a while, but he hasn't said more than an intelligent mumble. Jemma feels a bit awkward as she sits there, pretending to read while her eyes keep drifting his way. At some point, she'll need to pull him out of his own thoughts, but she's not sure when the moment will come.

So she watches him, wishing, not for the first time, that she really could read his thoughts. Are they focused more on Radcliffe, or his father? It's hard to tell which one would be worse. But she sees the nightstand in the corner of her eye, and there's no way that she can find her biography on Bruce Alberts half as interesting as the picture he's tucked in his journal.

She puts down her book and retrieves the picture as nonchalantly as possible, unable to prevent herself from grinning ear to ear when she sees the smile on his little face. If only she knew him then, if only he'd been with her from the beginning. He might have saved her from the loneliest part of her life. But here he is, a blue-eyed, blond little thing clinging to his mummy like a monkey. She's never seen anything so adorable, and she can't help it if it her heart starts to ache, if an old yearning comes back in full force. Even though she knows the picture hides half of the story, she supposes that the heart wants what the heart wants. 

Fitz, however, is still processing the aftermath of it all. Somehow, it's even more painful to watch him pace when he's juxtaposed with the smiling face of his much younger self. She puts the picture away and folds her hands into her lap, watching him pensively. It takes him a second to notice, but when he does, he stops cold.

"What?"

Jemma shrugs, making sure she gives him a smile. "I was hoping you were ready to talk about it."

He sighs, slinking onto the bed and kicking the shoes off his feet. His whole body sags as he peers over at her.

"You already know everything."

"Not what you're thinking," she says.

He huffs out a breath and rests his forehead on his knees. "You wouldn't like it."

She tilts her head at him. "I think I'd much rather hear what's bothering you and see if I can help than watch you wear a hole into the carpet."

When he sighs, his whole body sighs with him. "It's just . . . the truth is, I'm not that important to anyone. I've never met a single person who couldn't live without me."

His words pierce her heart with such swiftness that her mouth falls open in shock. She has so many arguments flooding her mouth at once that none will fit on her tongue. In the end, she just says, "I _love_ you."

He closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I told you that you wouldn't like it. I shouldn't have said it out loud."

He leans over like he's going to leave, and she catches his arm to stop him. "I love you, Fitz. I live with you. We're building a life together."

She gestures around their little room, at their many pictures of the two of them, and the one they have of space. It breaks her heart when he shakes his head at her.

"I know. I _know_ that, Jemma. I'm not saying you don't love me. It's just . . . you'd be fine if I was gone. You'd find someone else and move on with your life. Everyone would."

He takes a shuddering breath, and she's not sure who will come to tears first. It's like she's in one of those dreams where she watches Ward stab Fitz in the heart, and she can't even scream.

He glances over at the nightstand and nods resolutely. "It's just like my mum said. The world will be just like it was before I was born."

"No!"

She's shocked beyond all reason, filled with pure horror. "No, it wouldn't! I would be _devastated_ , Fitz. So would your mum, and every single person on the team. They _adore_ you. People who don't even know you! Did you know that when Agent Willis transferred here, we couldn't get him to speak for a full three weeks? He was so starstruck that you left him absolutely speechless!"

He folds his arms and refuses to look at her. "It's not the same."

"Yes, it is!" Her hands are flailing out on front of her, attempting to make points she can't put into words. "I don't know how you could ever think that I could just move on!"

He picks at the lint on his trousers, and when he speaks, it comes out as a whisper.

"Jemma, you already did."

Her hands fall down to her sides, utterly helpless. It's been a while since they've talked about her time on the planet, and she wonders how long this has been rolling around in his brain. Has he thought this whole time that theirs was a romance of convenience? That she chose him because he was the last contestant left standing?

"Not that it was wrong, of course. I'm glad you did it. He gave you hope, and I was just . . . I couldn't figure out how to get you back in time. You couldn't wait for me forever."

"Fitz." She's scrambling across the bed to put her hand on his shoulder, to guide his eyes towards her. "Is that what you've been thinking? That it's your fault I gave up hope? _You_ were my hope. I made a mistake, and I gambled everything on a shot _I_ miscalculated. And I lost you because of it!"

He smiles that sad smile that never fails to break her heart. "You had him, though. You got through it." 

She wants to put her hands over her ears, she wants to shut him up with a kiss that melts all his insecurity away. She wants to slap him. 

"Right," she says, "I got along so well that I resigned myself to a life of nothing because I was with a man who kept telling me there _was_ nothing. He didn't give me hope, Fitz. He sucked me dry of it. Then I came back to you, and I told you what I'd done, and do you know what you said to me?"

Fitz swallows, looking away.

"You looked me in the eye and told me we could fix it," she says. "I don't have the words to express what that meant to me."

That makes him look up at her, even as he wipes the tears from his eyes.

"You really think so?"

She almost wants to laugh. As if there was any question. As if she hadn't fallen in love with him at least five times before he agreed to start over with her. As if he weren't the most important person in her whole world. Her smile comes out sadder than she'd like, but it's real.

"Fitz, if you were there with me, we would have figured it out and gotten back in half the time. You know we would have."

He smiles, just out of the corner of his mouth, and does he know that's all it takes to light up the whole room?

"Yeah," he says, "we would have."

"Good," she says, resting her head on his shoulder and taking one of his hands in hers. She traces the creases in his hand and idly wonders if their future is written there. "I know your dad hurt you, but that doesn't make you worthless. You don't stop being a person just because somebody doesn't want you."

He lays his head on top of hers, squeezing her hand. "Thank you, Jemma." He feels and hears him take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "I couldn't live in this world without you."

She smiles into his shoulder, wishing he could always be this close. "I feel the same way. I hope you believe me."

"I believe you," he says, though his voice wavers. "I'm sorry, it's just, I keep feeling like you're hiding something from me, and I thought, that . . . I don't know what I thought, really." 

"You assumed the worst, as usual." She closes her eyes, breathing in his scent. "How you manage to see the best in everyone and the worst in yourself, I'll never know."

He shrugs as much as he can with her weight on his shoulder. "But there is something, right? Something you're too afraid to tell me? You were thinking of it just now; I could see it. That's what pushed me over the edge."

She furrows her brow, confused by the accusation. They've been working side by side with both Radcliffe and May's LMDs; there's nothing she's being ordered to keep from him. But she tracks her thoughts back to before he opened up, and it clicks.

"Oh," she says, "it's silly. Just me getting ahead of myself, that's all."

She hopes he'll drop it, but instead he says, "What do you mean?"

Her cheeks flush, and she tries to figure a way out of it before she decides that he just bore his soul to her, and the least she can do is trust him in return.

"I was just . . . well, I was wondering if, you know, with everything that happened with your dad, maybe you wouldn't  . . .

"Wouldn't what?"

She closes her eyes, already embarrassed. "Maybe you wouldn't want to be one."

He coughs, sitting straight up like he's just been bitten. He looks at her with wild eyes. "Children? You're talking about children? Our children?"

She shrugs, trying to play it off. "Not right away, of course. We'll probably wait until we get married, at least, and—"

"Married," he says, twisting his head to face her. She looks up to meet his gaze and finds disbelief in his eyes, like she's playing some cruel joke. She sits up, and he folds his arms. 

"Yes, married!" She throws her hands out to show him just how helpless she is, but he remains unmoved.

"Are you serious?"

She stares at him. "I already told you. In that video."

"Yeah, but you didn't say anything about—"

"Yes, well, now I have, and I just wish you would forget all about it."

"Hey." She feels a hand on her arm. "Jemma, it's okay. It's just . . . I guess I never thought about it. I always thought I'd work in a lab with you until I dropped dead from sun deprivation."

She looks at him, hating how contagious his smile is. "You'd be a great dad, Fitz. I know you would. But we don't have to talk about it now if you're not ready."

He nods, once, twice, looking down at the hand he still has on her arm. He slides his hand down until he can slip his fingers through hers.

"Well, we have time. Don't we?"

She answers by returning to her rightful place on his shoulder.

"I'd like to have forever, if that's alright."

She feels him swallow, and when he doesn't answer her, she contents herself with the way he places his free hand over their twined ones. It's a minute or two later when she feels a tear drop on the crown of her head.

"I love you, Jemma," he says.

"I love you, Fitz," she says back.

And there's something about the silence that grows between them that feels like a victory. Maybe Fitz won't need to pace around their room anymore. Maybe he's learned that he just needs to give her his heart.

And maybe, she thinks as she buries herself into his neck, if she's really lucky, he'll give her even more than that.

Because she still thinks of that cottage out in Scotland, where people would talk like him. Now, she imagines a little boy that looks like him, one that scampers down the stairs as Daddy chases him. Will he reach out towards this world with a yearning to know how it works? Will he cling to her like she's everything she needed?

She hopes, at least, that he'll grow up to bring good things into this world. That he will take the love she has for Fitz and the love Fitz has for her and multiply it into something grander than the both of them.

And maybe, one day, he'll be able to look into his father's eyes and heal something he's never been able to fix.

That's what she dreams of as she sits with her hands in the hands of the one she loves, knowing this future is far away, but yearning for it still. She quiets herself with the memory of another time his hand was in hers, when they knew their destiny was set in stone and that it would bring the two of them together.

And she's already seen their future, hasn't she? It's there whenever she closes her eyes.

She closes her eyes now and finds peace in three words:

It will come.

It will come.

It will come.

**Author's Note:**

> I regularly post sneak peeks and general ramblings about my writing on [my tumblr](http://agent-85.tumblr.com/tagged/Writings%20of%20Agent%2085).


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